Creative engagement can keep you from becoming stale and losing your intellectual snap. It may take some mental exercise on your part to keep your brain healthy and up to snuff but the results can make any such efforts worthwhile.
Creativity and being open to new ideas will keep your brain from dimming before its time. Looking to the future and to new experiences instead of living in the past can keep you feeling -- and thinking -- young.
"But you don't have to be creative with a capital 'C' to keep your brain healthy and vital. There are many forms of creativity. Writing a silly poem to celebrate a friend's birthday, coming up with a new variation on an old family recipe-- all of these are ways to express yourself and allow yourself to exert a bit of free-wheeling thinking and doing. McFadden and Basting talk about 'creative engagement' and suggest that it's a great way to enlist the parts of your brain that can benefit from mental exercise."
http://www.thirdage.com/brain-fitness/the-flexible-brain-how-creativity-affects-aging-0